This invention relates to ink jet printing and deals more particularly with an ink jet printing system especially suited to printing large graphics such as outdoor advertising billboards and signs or displays for use in railway or airport terminals, shopping malls and other open public areas.
Heretofore large graphics of good quality have been difficult, time consuming and expensive to produce. The most attractive billboards, for example, are often painted by hand, which is obviously a slow process. Where printing and other mechanical techniques are employed large amounts of time are generally required to prepare for the actual printing or other involved mechanical process, making it essentially impossible to produce a large graphic at reasonable expense on short order.
A general aim of the invention is therefore to provide a system for producing graphics, particularly large-scale colored ones, of high quality at reasonable expense, with a further aim being to provide such a system usable to produce graphics on relatively short order thereby permitting the production and hanging of graphics referring to very recent events.
These general aims are achieved in accordance with the invention, and as described in more detail hereinafter, by an ink jet printing system having at least one and preferably more ink jet printing heads which print onto a plurality of flat rigid panels moved successively past the printing head or heads along an endless path with the printing heads preferably being ones which eject relatively large volume drops of pigmented ink onto the panels to create the desired graphic, each panel having printed onto it only a portion of the total graphic and a plurality of panels being placed side-by-side after the printing to collectively form the graphic.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment and from the accompanying drawings.